Colin Campbell

Edinburgh

Colin Campbell lived from 1686 to 1757. He was one of the founders
of the Swedish East India Company and was the first Swedish Envoy to the
Emperor of China. The wider picture in Scotland at the time is set out in our
Historical Timeline.

Colin Campbell was born in
Edinburgh where his father,
John Campbell, was a lawyer. His mother was Elizabeth Campbell of Moy. He was
the youngest of three brothers, and all three became lawyers. Colin Campbell
became a Burgess of Edinburgh in 1720 at the age of
32. Soon afterwards he found himself in financial ruin because of his
investments in The South Sea Company. The company
had been granted monopoly rights to trade between England and South America in
return for its taking over the English national debt. The company collapsed in
1720, and the financial scandal became known as "The South Sea Bubble".

Campbell fled to Ostend in Belgium to evade his creditors. At the
time this was part of the Austrian Netherlands, and Campbell tried
unsuccessfully to help the Austrians set up a competitor to the British East
India Company. In 1730 he moved on to Gothenburg in Sweden where he worked in
partnership with a number of established merchants to set up the Swedish East
India Company, which King Frederik I gave a monopoly on all Swedish trade with
the "East Indies": in effect, anywhere east of the southern tip of South
Africa. Campbell became a Swedish citizen in 1731.

In 1732 Campbell sailed to Canton on board the Fredericus Rex Sueciae to establish a Swedish trading
post with full authority to act as Swedish Ambassador to the Emperor of China.
He returned to Sweden 550 days after leaving it. Despite being boarded by the
Dutch Navy on the return trip, the voyage proved spectacularly successful for
the Swedish East India Company and its directors, including Campbell, and for
the Swedish Crown. Over the next 15 years the Swedish East India Company sailed
to Canton 20 times. Campbell was able to pay off his creditors in full long
before his death in 1757.